‘I’d have shaved a good few minutes off that blue one’s time, I can tell you,’ she had said, taking her glass away from her eye and trying to spit out the mouthful of hair that had blown in before she took another bite of chicken. ‘They don’t have the first idea what she can do.’ She tore a strip of chicken meat away from the bone with her teeth and put the glass back to her eye. ‘A waste of a good wind, if you ask me.’
For the rest of the day, Aurora and Pearl took to calling her ‘Cap’n Bligh’ until Fleur pointed out with great dignity that Captain Bligh was a naval officer who would not have known a tiller from a teapot, and if they had to call her something of the like she thought Francis Drake was more of a sailor any day.
‘Why did she go without me?’ said Miss Beauclerc, bringing me out of my memories. ‘And what am I to do now?’
‘Well, if we’re picking things over,’ I said, ‘why did you leave early and come to the Patersons’? If you were all set for today why did you bolt a week early?’
‘I couldn’t stay,’ said Miss Beauclerc, not helpfully. She had bowed her head and muttered the words as though ashamed of them.
‘Were you sacked?’
‘No, I was not,’ she said. ‘I could not stay another minute in that place.’
‘Yes, but why?’ I said.
‘How much do you know?’ she asked. ‘You said you are an old friend of Fleur’s?’
‘I know nothing about your business,’ I told her. ‘I don’t know why Fleur left. I don’t even know why Fleur came.’
‘She came, as did I, because Miss Fielding was a wonderful, kind, compassionate and understanding person. Sadly deceived, too innocent and trusting to see what sort of woman she had fallen in with.’
‘Miss Shanks,’ I said.
‘And so we decided to leave, Fleur and me,’ said Miss Beauclerc.
‘Just like Miss Blair and Miss Taylor and Miss Bell before you,’ I said.
‘Not the same thing at all. They were sacked. They were the lucky ones. We had to rip ourselves away and we knew that life would never be the same again. We did not care, we each had one true friend… Or I thought I did. I do not understand why she abandoned me.’
‘Nor do I,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose I can strike a bargain with you, Miss Beauclerc. You tell me what Ivy Shanks did to you and Fleur and I’ll fetch your things and arrange some mode of transport to take you away. What do you say to that?’
‘I say no thank you,’ said Miss Beauclerc. ‘And I ask what sort of woman would bargain with me instead of just helping me.’ I flushed then, for to hear it put that way was pretty shaming.
‘The thing is, mademoiselle, that a woman’s body washed up-’
‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘The policeman told Mrs Paterson, when he came. And Mrs Paterson said the man I saw off with the dogs had been talking about her to all the neighbours too.’
‘And so I need to be sure that you know nothing about how she died before I could possibly think of helping you get away.’
‘I?’ said Miss Beauclerc. ‘Why should I know anything about some poor drowned woman? I can tell you how it feels to seek that way out of life’s cares, because I came close to it myself. Had it not been for Fleur I should have washed up somewhere with my face all nibbled and seaweed in my hair.’
‘Did the police tell you that?’ I said, sharply.
‘They told Mrs Paterson, and she took great delight in telling me. But that is all I know and I can’t understand why you would suspect me.’
‘Just seems odd, that’s all,’ I said, rather lamely. ‘You’ve run away to here and the police think that the body might have gone in from here.’
‘And who is this woman I have killed for no reason?’ she said. ‘The wicked creature of depravity that I am.’ She was getting very angry and yet, and yet, as I looked at her, her cheeks flushed and her eyes flashing, it was not offended innocence that I saw but something else entirely. And it occurred to me that no one running away in the night and shoving her belongings overboard in hopes of being thought drowned could be all that innocent anyway. She had maligned Miss Shanks but offered no details and although I too found the woman odd it could not be disputed that she was steering a very successful girls’ school through a stormy passage with sackings, deaths and resignations threatening to capsize the vessel at every turn.
‘No one knows who the body is,’ I said. ‘Fleur went to see and Miss Barclay did too and neither of them knew the woman.’
‘And so why would you think she is anything to do with me?’ said Miss Beauclerc.
‘No reason at all,’ I answered. ‘Just that rather a lot has happened since I arrived, leaving no time to sort it all out and think it through.’
‘Since you arrived where?’ she asked me. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘I’m the new English mistress at St Columba’s,’ I said. ‘Now that Fleur is gone.’
‘And did Miss Shanks appoint you?’
‘Sort of. Pretty much,’ I said.
‘Then you should be very careful,’ she said. ‘It must look like a lifeline to you just now. It isn’t, believe me.’
‘I’m going to ask you one last time, Mademoiselle Beauclerc,’ I said. ‘And then of course I shall fetch your things and bring them here to you whether you answer me or not. I’m not a monster. Now, once and for all, why did you leave St Columba’s?’
‘Because it is a place of great wickedness and it would have corrupted me to stay.’ She must have known this was worse than useless to me, heavy on drama (and delivered most flamboyantly too, I must say) but lacking any actual content. Her voice softened a little as she went on. ‘Fleur was happy here for five years and asked me to join her. I had one wonderful year with her and with Miss Fielding and the Misses Taylor and Bell too. But afterwards… We could not leave in the usual way – Miss Shanks’s contracts are very binding – so we decided to leave in an unusual way.’
‘But you bolted,’ I said. ‘And then Fleur bolted. And Fleur left you stranded.’
‘And then you came and now you will help me.’
‘And where will you go?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Beauclerc. She did not wring her hands exactly but she clasped them together so hard that her fingers whitened. ‘We were supposed to go away to Fleur’s home.’
Of course, I thought. Pereford. Where else would she go? There had been times in my own life when I had dreamed of going back to Pereford for succour, and I had never really lived there.
‘But I can’t go there without her, can I?’ Miss Beauclerc was saying. ‘I have no money left and no family who will own me. I – I – I…’
I would love to report that what I said next sprang from pity for her, so far from home, friendless and without a change of clothes, sitting there hunched in her chair and staring at an impossible future of lonely destitution. Honesty forces me to admit, however, that I wanted her safely stashed where I could easily find her again. It was out of my mouth before I could catch it and swallow.
‘If I bring your things this evening can you catch a late train?’ She started to interrupt me. ‘And you can go to Perthshire. To my home. And stay there until things here…’